Performance artist Robert Ladislas Derr will exhibit “Day in, Day Out,” a three-screen video installation at the Gem Center for the Arts (2417 W. Bank Drive) in Boise, Sept. 9 to Oct. 21.
The Columbus, Ohio-based performance artist will be in conversation with Boise State English Associate Professor Ralph Clare about his work at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 9. The event is free and open to the public.
Derr is a prolific artist who has shown his work internationally and nationally. He earned his master’s degree from the Rhode Island School of Design, attended the Photography Institute National Graduate Seminar at New York University, and earned his bachelor’s degree from the Art Academy of Cincinnati.
Clare is the author of “Fictions Inc.: The Corporation in Postmodern Fiction, Film, and Popular Culture,” and the editor of the forthcoming “Cambridge Companion to David Foster Wallace.”
Derr “is less interested with the body enduring the singular and more with how it perseveres through the every day; the anything but spectacular,” Clair said. “We all have our daily routine that we think gives sensible meaning to our lives. Ironically, habit shields us from boredom and despair, gives us something to fill the void of time-unto-death, but it also deadens us to new possibilities. Derr strips daily life and the body down to the absurd bareness of their bones. What exactly, Derr asks, is a day; how do we make meanings out of it; and what about the body that traverses it all?”
Note: Derr uses nudity to portray the full scope of human vulnerability and absurdity. The exhibition may not be appropriate for all audiences.